This was formally our adoption experience of Hannah but now will just be our families adventures!

Saturday, June 17, 2006

Last night we also went on a wonderful river boat cruise to see the all the lights. The buildings are all lit up along the Pearl River that is right outside of our hotel. It doesn't look so great during the day but in the evening it is just beautiful. Some of the big buildings are like a big giant TV screen and will run commercials and sometimes different scenes that are like short cartoons and different pictures. It is pretty neat. For once we let Tersea be in a picture. This is our little China family!!!

We took the picture at left because it always seems that whenever Teresa is along we are going to be in trouble somehow and so they had to show us how to use life Jackets because she got on the boat.

(You know I love ya Teresa!! LOL) It is a huge joke here in Guangzhou that it seems what ever Teresa touches lately falls apart) NOT really it just seems that way.

When she sat down at the Passport office the other day the computer suddenly broke and we had a great laugh about that and now we find out today that we were suppposed to get the kids passports today and now because of that computer glitch we cannot get them until Monday (about 15 families have this problem) they do not think it will hold us up any as the US consulate knows about this problem but we were supposed to go to the consulate on Monday morning and now we are not sure what time we will go. We are not worried but and we were told that it shouldn't hold us up from coming home but I will update more when I know on Monday.

One other funny story as we had to get our own taxi's coming back from the River boat. That is all find a good but we thought we would all cram into one. Oh my that was an experince.

I cannot say it near as well as Teresa can so I am borrowing this from her webpage.

Now on to the taxi ride back to the hotel. Imagine a zillion people just getting off this boat and trying to hail cabs on a curb on a Friday night. Now imagine three adults and four children from where taxis don't exist trying to hail a cab and not get ran over. So Nate grabs one and says get in. Brenda gets in with her two girls and I figure I'll take the next one that I can get with my two girls and make the statement to come back for me if they don't see me in an hour. Well, Nate had intended on staying back himself and was telling me to get in. Needless to say, cars were honking, people were yelling and next thing I knew we had Brenda and I with four girls crammed, and I mean crammed, into the back seat of a very small taxi! Nate jumped in front and the taxi driver looked back and about had a cow!! I guess it's a good thing we don't speak Chinese. He had some things to say. Brenda and I decided he could probably lose his license over this so we decide to duck the kids down as much as possible. These girls were squished. Poor Alyssa was curled on my lap like a snail with my arm over her head, and I kept saying stay down, stay down. Alyssa then decided to announce to the entire cab that my armpits stunk! At that point, I was laughing so hard I snorted! (I guess you had to be there.) Apparently, the driver was lacking in a sense of humor and kept hitting Nate on the leg throughout the trip and pointing to the back and scolding him in Chinese. (I'm not sure the uncontrollable laughing helped.) You should have seen the doorman's face at the hotel when we piled out of the taxi! The taxi driver ended up demanding 30 yuan for a 10 yuan trip. We gladly paid it! (About $4) I decided it would best not to have taken a picture while in that taxi. You'll just need to use your imagination for that one. What a day!!!Like I said I can't tell it any better than that. We were still laughing when we went up to our room and we had some people putting their heads out of their door shushing us. For those of you who know me you know how hard I can laught and you can x's that my 7 of us plus the floor lady that we have befriend and she was laughing hysterically as well after we told her the story.

Hope you all had a good night. Miss you all!!!

To all of my COP friends!! Wow I can't wait until you come here!!! You will LOVE it!!!!

Hi Brenda!My daughter, Lori, and I were crying we were laughing so hard at your last post! Thank you, I needed that! The pool at the White Swan looks wonderful - our whole family will be taking advantage of it when we get there. No word on TAs yet. Praying for you guys!-Sandy (Rachel's mom/COP group)